


Standing Alone

by Zarla



Category: Left 4 Dead
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Female Characters, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Apocalyptic, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-08
Updated: 2010-06-08
Packaged: 2017-10-11 07:57:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/110159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zarla/pseuds/Zarla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hunter might have been immune, but her friends were not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Standing Alone

**Author's Note:**

> Original characters meant to be zombies, although this particular AU explores them as Survivors. More information on them [here](http://www.ashido.com/huntersmoker/).

"Do you hear that?"

"Hmm?" Smoker looked up from the dead body she was searching for supplies. Hunter was standing by the doorway that led outside, pressed against the wall with twin pistols at the ready.

"That growling noise... like a dog or something. Do you hear it?"

This guy didn't have anything useful on him anyway, and Smoker stood up and walked over to her, boots crunching across broken glass and fragments of the door. Hunter held up a hand, an indication for her to listen, and Smoker tilted her head slightly.

"Huh..." Definitely something growling nearby. "That's weird."

"I haven't seen any zombie dogs yet..." Hunter looked around the corner of the empty doorway before ducking back inside. "Do you think it's one of the normal zombies? I've never heard them make that noise before."

"Maybe." Smoker cocked her shotgun. "Either way, we should be careful."

The street seemed empty, although appearances lately could be easily deceiving. More than once they'd had a sudden horde of infected people seemingly appear out of nowhere and swarm them, and they couldn't be cautious enough under such circumstances.

There was a car in front of their building, empty and dark, its windshield shattered, and another that had collided with the lamp post across the street. A mailbox had been torn open by something or another, leaving scraps of forgotten paper fluttering across the pavement whenever there was a light breeze, and the smell of death and decay was everywhere. There were a few bodies littering the roads, unfortunates who had fallen to the infected's teeth or infected who had fallen to the few survivors remaining.

Hunter ducked outside, keeping low to the ground, and when Smoker noticed someone still standing some distance away, Hunter was already shooting. The figure dropped with a low moan, but the growling noise continued. So that wasn't the source, and she didn't see any other zombies around. She couldn't place where the sound was coming from, and it didn't sound happy. She didn't like this. Like the zombie hordes they'd struggled through already weren't enough.

Something rattled in a nearby alleyway, a trash can toppling and spilling out across the street. Hunter was in front of her, pistols ready, in a matter of seconds. Since Hunter seemed to have the alley covered, Smoker took a quick look behind them to make sure they weren't being flanked.

"Hey..." Hunter said, and Smoker turned back towards her. She could see a person near the trash can, snuffling on all fours. They were wearing a hooded sweatshirt, and she could see familiar bands of silver around their limbs. "Hey, it's Ray! Ray!" She could hear the relief in her voice, and Hunter quickly ran forward to greet her old friend. "Ray, are you okay? Thank God you're alive- have you seen anyone else?"

Ray turned towards her, his hood covering his eyes but not his bloodstained mouth, and then he launched himself towards her with an echoing, hideous scream. Hunter was caught completely off guard as Ray slammed into her, pinning her to the ground.

She was screaming, and he was snarling and tearing wildly at her face with his claws, blood flecking the sidewalk around them. He was only on her for a few seconds before Smoker kicked him off with enough force to cause him to roll into the wall nearby.

She didn't hesitate, and she didn't give him time to recover. While he was still on the ground, she planted one foot against his chest to pin him in place, and blew his head off with one blast from her shotgun.

"Wait!" She heard Hunter from behind her, and the adrenaline had faded enough so now she was listening. "Wait..."

She turned to look at her, foot still resting on Ray's chest, and Hunter was pushing herself up off the ground, her neck and face stained red. She could see long gashes cutting down her cheeks, bloody tears through the front of her sweater.

"I knew him..." Hunter said, weakly, and Smoker looked back down at the thing she'd killed.

"Well he's dead now," she said, finally, and she walked over to Hunter, bending down to help her up. "Like we're going to be if we don't keep moving."

"I knew him..." Hunter said again, and she was staring at Ray's body and the air of nonchalance she'd somehow managed to hold onto during this entire nightmare was gone. "Ray- We ran together... he taught me how to wall jump..."

She could hear the howling of an incoming horde, and she grabbed Hunter's arm and pulled her up. "C'mon, we have to keep moving."

Hunter stumbled a little, shook her head, and she went to pick up her fallen pistols. The horde came pouring out of the building they'd just left, screaming and gibbering, and Hunter crouched down in front of her and fired into them. Normally she would have laughed at them, dared them to try and take her on, would have crowed victoriously when the crowd dispersed and the two of them stood triumphant, but she didn't now. When they were all dead, she stood there, pistols smoking, staring at them and her eyes slowly moved to Ray's body, nearly lost among the freshly dead. She stared at him until Smoker asked her what she was doing, and the two of them got moving again.

They found what they hoped would be a safe place to hide for a while, and they locked and barred the door, moving any available furniture in front of it in case the locks didn't hold. Once things seemed safe enough for them to momentarily relax, Hunter went and sat on a nearby crate and stared at her pistols with uncharacteristic intensity.

"Do you want first shift?" Smoker said, sitting down across the room from her and studying the assault rifle she'd picked up on their way here. She was getting the hang of firing it which was something, although it still jolted through her body and made her arms ache, but she still didn't exactly know how to reload it. It couldn't have been too complicated... she managed to figure out the shotgun alright, after all. Well, mostly.

"I can't believe Ray was a zombie," Hunter said, and Smoker looked at her. She had her head down, her hood over her eyes, and if it weren't for a few exceptions, she and Ray didn't look that different. "I thought they were all okay."

"What, your friends?"

"Yeah... I thought if I made it, then they would have made it too, you know?" Hunter said, and she picked at the duct tape around her wrists, a fashion quirk that she and all her parkour friends shared. "I didn't think he'd get infected..."

"Who knows why some people get it and some people don't." Smoker tapped a cigarette against the floor and put it in her mouth. "There's no predicting it."

"It's just... weird," Hunter said, rubbing her arms. "I never thought Ray would do something like that... he used to say I was like his little sister, and... and he didn't even recognize me."

"He was a zombie." Smoker lit her cigarette. "He probably didn't remember anything. All he wanted to do was kill you. We probably did him a favor."

Hunter looked at her, frowning, and Smoker breathed out a cloud of smoke.

"He's better off this way," she said, hoping maybe that that phrasing would get her point across a bit less bluntly, but Hunter didn't seem soothed by it.

"You didn't know him," Hunter said, and she looked away. "I knew him... he was my friend."

"Zombies aren't your friends," Smoker said, a bit annoyed, and she reluctantly began toying with her gun again, trying to figure out what to detach and how to reload it. "There aren't any friends anymore. It's just us against them."

Hunter didn't say anything to that, and after a while Smoker put the gun down, not entirely confident that she'd reloaded it correctly but too irritated by it to keep trying, and she looked up to see what Hunter was doing. She was still sitting on the crate, her pistols beside her, and she was staring down at the floor. She had an unfamiliarly somber expression on her wounded face.

Smoker waited for a few seconds, then beckoned to her with one hand. "C'mere." Hunter looked up, blinking. "Gotta wrap you up before we get moving again."

Hunter waited for a few seconds longer, then stood up and went over to her. She knelt down while Smoker began rummaging through the first aid kit she'd managed to snag while they darted past an ambulance outside.

"Does it hurt much?"

Hunter had been staring off into the distance, and at Smoker's question she blinked and tilted her head at her. The blood had dried, the wounds across her face starting to scab over, and thankfully Ray hadn't managed to hit any major arteries or else she'd probably be dead now. Gashes cut down her cheeks, along the side of her neck, and a few near her collarbones where her sweater had been a little torn. They weren't exactly superficial, but they weren't as bad as they could be. Hunter smiled, a little, a faint imitation of her normal confidence.

"This? Nah."

"That's more like it." Smoker ripped open one of the packets of antiseptic wipes, and she started working on clearing her face of blood. Hunter winced a little, but this wasn't the first time either of them had been injured, and Hunter was no stranger to pain. "Lucky I got him off you in time. He might've killed you."

A moment, and Hunter shook her head, causing Smoker to grab her chin to try and keep her still. "Ray wouldn't kill me."

"He wasn't Ray," Smoker said, frowning, and she moved Hunter's head to one side so she could get to one of the gashes near her throat. "Not anymore."

She let her go to get some bandages from the kit, and when she looked back to her Hunter had her eyes back down to the floor again.

"You don't understand," she said, quietly, and Smoker pressed a bandage across one of her cheeks. "You didn't have a lot of friends."

"You're right. Up here." She snapped her fingers above Hunter's head, and Hunter tilted her head up so she could bandage her neck. "I've just got you, and God knows you don't make this difficult enough for me already."

She'd covered most of her wounds with what she had, and she leaned back a little to survey her work. She'd never really known a lot about first aid before, but the zombie apocalypse was forcing her to learn a lot of skills she didn't think she'd ever need to know.

"How you feeling?"

"Fine, I guess," Hunter said, still apparently out of sorts, and she kept looking down. "I really thought Ray would be immune... maybe the others are okay."

"Maybe." Smoker doubted it, although she wasn't going to say that. Hunter didn't seem to be in the mood for it. "You want first shift?"

"You can take it. I feel kind of tired."

"Alright."

Hunter pulled together some of the discarded tarps nearby and curled up on them, and she didn't say anything else. Smoker watched her for a while, wondering if there was something she should say about this entire thing, but in the end decided against it. She wasn't sure there was anything she could say to make her feel better anyway. Apologizing for blowing her ex-friend's head off didn't quite seem like enough, and really, Smoker wasn't sorry about doing it. He was trying to kill her.

She breathed out a cloud of smoke and sighed. Fucking zombies.

* * *

They were on the move again the next day, Mercy Hospital still an intimidating distance away, and they heard that growling again.

Hunter had mostly been back to her old self up to that point, taunting and laughing at the hordes that tried to bring them down, calling out directions for Smoker and covering her while she aimed, teasing her when she missed, but when they heard that growling sound, her bravado vanished. The change on her face was striking, the first time she looked close to being afraid.

Sure enough, it was another one of Hunter's parkour friends, David this time. He leapt down from above, slamming Smoker into the ground with a crunch that tore up her back and nearly broke several bones. He snarled in her face, mouth and teeth stained red with blood, empty eye sockets beneath the edge of his hood, and she struggled to catch his hands before they could rip her apart. He tore through the front of her shirt, his hands around her throat when Hunter tackled him off.

He rolled, sprang back up to his feet growling at her like a rabid animal, and Hunter pointed her pistols at him and she didn't move. He crouched down to the ground, readying himself to leap again and Smoker grabbed her rifle where she'd dropped it beside her, aimed as best as she could from the ground and fired off several rounds. When they struck him, David yelped like a kicked dog, and he jumped on top of a car and then off the side of a building, upwards and out of sight.

"Why didn't you shoot him?!" Smoker shouted at her, and Hunter startled like she'd been in a trance. She turned and pulled Smoker up off the ground, and when Smoker winced and stumbled somewhat (God help David if he'd actually fractured one of her bones, she'd make him pay for that), Hunter held her up.

"Why didn't you shoot him?" Smoker hissed through clenched teeth as Hunter held her steady. "He's just going to try again!"

"I- I wanted to but I was-" Hunter stumbled through her words, and she was shaking. "I was going to, but-"

The sound of a dozen incoming footsteps, the incoherent screaming of an angry mob heading their way, cut her off, but Smoker suspected that Hunter wouldn't have finished her thought anyway. Smoker leaned against a nearby car, ignoring the stabbing pain through her leg, and fired over Hunter's head into the crowd, and Hunter crouched in front of her, firing round after round into the people coming towards them.

When they'd finished them all off, a moment of silence before the next attack, she could hear that growling again. Smoker pushed herself off the car, limping towards the nearest building.

"Inside. Now."

Hunter followed behind her, and when Smoker looked back to make sure she was there, she saw Hunter looking behind her, like she was looking for him.

* * *

They blocked the door, pushed as many heavy things in front of it as they could manage, and through the small barred window she saw a blurry shape in the darkness. It crouched on all fours, slinking its way towards the door.

Hunter was behind her, investigating their new safe room, and Smoker looked back at her for a second.

"Looks like your ex-friend's following us. Figures your parking friends would find a new way to be a pain in my ass," Smoker said, not bothering to hide the distaste in her voice, and Hunter was by her side in moments. Smoker held out an arm to keep her from getting too close to the door.

"David's out there?"

"It's not David anymore," Smoker said, and low growling came from outside the door. "But it's out there."

"David?" Hunter called out, and the growling didn't change in pitch. There was a scraping sound, claws against the door's metal surface, and then a moment of silence.

Smoker backed away, her arm forcing Hunter to do so as well, and as she thought, David leapt up at the window in the door, shoving an arm through and flailing at them wildly, snarling. It was easier now to get a look at his face, his skin an unhealthy gray and his hood pulled down over his eyes. There was blood smeared around his mouth, on his teeth, on his hands and beneath his fingernails, and he smelled like death.

Smoker wasn't sure if she'd met him, before. She'd never had a good memory for all of Hunter's friends, and the effect the infection had had on him didn't make him any more recognizable.

"David?" Hunter said, a bit quieter this time, and Smoker shook her head. "David, it's me, do you remember-"

"He doesn't remember shit." Smoker grimaced and readied her pistol. David kept trying futilely to get at them, spitting and growling as he swiped at the air.

"Smoker, I knew him!" Hunter said, grabbing her arm, and she shook her off with a grunt of irritation. "Don't-"

She fired a shot, managing to hit David's shoulder, and he yelped and ducked out of sight.

"You get the hell out of here!" she shouted, and fired a few more rounds at the door for emphasis.

"Smoker!"

Low growling from outside the door again, and Hunter was back on her arm.

"Smoker, don't, maybe he'll go away-"

She turned and looked Hunter in the eye. "David's dead, Hunter. That thing isn't him."

Again, a clawing arm through the barred window, snarling and she aimed a bit more carefully this time. A shot that might have gone through his forehead ended up through the lower part of his face, thanks to Hunter pulling on her arm at the last minute, shouting "Don't!". David let out a high-pitched yipe and fell out of sight. He didn't get back up.

"Smoker-" Hunter started, and Smoker yanked her arm out of her grip.

"You're going to get us killed," Smoker growled in her face, and she limped away from her.

* * *

"Hey."

Smoker opened her eyes, lifted her head from the wall she'd been curled up against and turned around. Hunter was sitting near her, a first aid kit by her side.

"You still mad?"

Smoker thought about it for a moment, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. "Not as much."

"Then let me take a look at you." Hunter opened up the kit. "I saw you limping before."

"My back's all fucked up." Smoker straightened up before a sharp ache through it stopped her in her tracks. Hunter put a hand on her shoulder, pushing her a little, and Smoker obligingly shifted herself around so her back was to her. "He landed on me from pretty high up."

"Yeah... looks like your shirts are a bit torn up. Might want to look around a department store for new ones if we get the chance." She pulled at her overshirt, and Smoker shrugged it off, a sharp ache going through her shoulders at the movement. A moment, and she felt her tugging at the one underneath, and she pulled it off over her head.

"How's it look back there?"

"Sort of like hamburger," Hunter said, with a touch of her normal humor.

"Nice imagery."

"Could be worse." She heard the sound of plastic being ripped open, and she jerked a bit when she felt the sting of antiseptic against her wounds. "It's not bleeding too much."

"Well, that's something."

Silence between them for a while, Hunter rolling a strip of gauze around her chest, and she pulled at her shoulder. "Turn around."

Smoker did so, and Hunter began cleaning the few wounds across her face and chest that David had managed to inflict.

"I'm sorry about before but..." Hunter said, softly, and Smoker made a short questioning sound. "It's just... it's kind of hard, you know? To see them like that... they were my friends. We all ran together and it was like we were this big family, and... I mean, David took me out for my birthday once, I met his family... he told me he wanted to move out west to Oregon, maybe..."

Hunter's voice was fading, like she was starting to talk to herself, and Smoker watched as she dug out some bandages from the first aid kit. She closed her eyes as Hunter pressed down the adhesive across her face, and her wounds stung but she wasn't about to complain about something so minor. Her hip still hurt but there was nothing really that could be done about that with just a first aid kit... she'd just have to hope that time would take care of it and it was nothing serious after all.

The thought of how she might react if Hunter got infected crossed her mind, and she immediately pushed it away.

"You can't let it get to you," Smoker mumbled eventually. "It's too dangerous."

"I know."

Hunter volunteered for the first shift, and Smoker fell into an uneasy sleep on the couch cushions they'd pulled free before using it to block the door.

* * *

They were getting closer to Mercy Hospital, and what they hoped would be their eventual salvation from this nightmare. Smoker was still limping, although not as badly as before, and she hoped the decrease in pain meant that she was healing alright on her own. She found a sniper rifle, which let her keep her distance for the most part, and Hunter worked well as her spotter. Unfortunately she had no idea how to reload it, and as such was trying to conserve ammo as best she could. If she ran out she might have to abandon it like the assault rifle after it had jammed.

Hunter was working hard to try and keep zombies away from her, to protect her and it might have been because of what had happened the day before, not that Smoker was going to ask or cared what her motivation might be. She'd long ago given up on understanding all of Hunter's behavior, and she had a feeling that feeling was mutual. What mattered was staying alive.

She had to sit and rest sometimes when it hurt too much to walk, and Hunter diligently picked off any zombies that tended to come their way, looked at her every now and then and asked her if she was ready to go, if she wanted the pills she'd picked up. She was trying her best.

There was no avoiding the inevitable. This time, the victim was Jordan. He appeared seemingly out of nowhere, rushed at Hunter from the ground and crashed them both into the brick wall behind her with a loud scream. Smoker didn't even feel any pain in her leg until after she'd kicked him off, the adrenaline blurring it away for a few brief seconds. A few well-aimed shots and he was down with a harsh scream of agony, and she picked Hunter up from the ground where she was trembling. This time she'd been quick enough so that the only damage had been from the initial impact against the wall, and Hunter was on her feet and following her again without too much downtime.

Hunter's aim was worse afterwards, and guessing from how she held herself while walking, Jordan had managed to knock something loose when they hit the wall, although they wouldn't have much chance to investigate until they reached someplace safe. Neither of them said anything about what had happened to him.

Mercy Hospital was closer now, maybe only a day away with the slow and steady progress they were making. It might have been easier if they had more people with them, but the only evidence they'd seen of other uninfected people in the city were the supplies they left behind on their dead bodies, in futile stockpiles in overwhelmed stockades.

There was just the dead and the helicopters that made passes over the empty city, promising an escape if they could just make it to Mercy Hospital. What other option did they have?

Their refuge this time was up higher, in an abandoned office building. Being up higher didn't necessarily mean they were safer, and the windows were a definite source of concern, but it was all they could find and they needed to rest before moving on. They blocked the door, tried their best to block the window, tended their wounds (it didn't seem like Hunter had dislocated anything on further inspection, although it still hurt for her to walk... they just had to hope for the best) and tried to rest.

Smoker was sleeping, Hunter on watch and she woke up to the sound of someone talking.

"No no no no no..." Hunter was pacing back and forth, gun in hand, all trembling nervous energy, and Smoker pushed herself up off the back of a chair she'd been sleeping on and tried to orient herself to the situation. "No no no..."

She was about to ask what it was that had upset her, and then she heard a faint growling some distance away. Hunter jerked, turned towards the sound, and she clutched her gun tightly.

"No no no no, go away, just leave, go away..." Talking to herself, her voice shaking, and Smoker watched her. She went back to pacing back and forth when the growling faded, still shaking.

How many of Hunter's friends were even left?

"Please just go..."

"What is it?" Smoker said, even though she knew, and Hunter whirled to face her.

"Nothing, it's nothing," she said, quickly, and that faint growling came up again, and she took a sharp breath. She looked close to hyperventilating, and she was still shaking. "It's too far away, I couldn't get it from here anyway, I bet he'll just go, it's fine, it's nothing."

Smoker pushed herself up, rubbed at her sore shoulder, didn't say anything and Hunter was still breathing too hard and too fast, staring at her with pleading eyes.

"C'mere." She held out her hand to Hunter, and after a moment, she walked over to her, and Smoker pulled her down to sit beside her. "It's okay."

Hunter hesitated, still trembling with unspent energy, and she spoke haltingly. "I just- how many of them- did any of them- are any of them immune too? Or are they all- all gone? David and Ray and Jordan and- they're all dead and maybe everyone's dead-"

Smoker put her arm around her shoulders, and Hunter leaned in towards her, and she should still feel her trembling.

"Why didn't I get sick too?" Hunter said, her voice unsteady. "Why didn't... why am I the only one that's okay?"

"I don't know," Smoker said. "But I don't know if I'd call it luck."

"I just can't believe- I thought we'd always be friends, I thought- and they're all dead, they're all dead or they're sick and going to be dead and I'm- I'm the only one..."

Smoker didn't know what to say to that, so she squeezed her shoulder, and Hunter covered her face with her hands.

"I don't want to kill them, I wanted- I want them to be okay, I don't- I don't want to kill them..." Hunter's voice broke.

Smoker sighed, and she squeezed her shoulder again. "I know."

Hunter was still shaking, making quiet sounds despite her best efforts to bite them back, and Smoker stayed by her. After a time she leaned her head against Smoker's shoulder, still breathing somewhat irregularly, exhausted and Smoker kept her close.

"It's just you and me now," she said, and Hunter let out a shaky breath. "There's nothing we can do except survive."

"Why?" Hunter said, softly. "Why us? Why are we immune, when everyone else...?"

Smoker had been wondering that since the beginning, when her neighbors broke through her door and tried to rip her to shreds, when she and Hunter had made their escape across the roofs and saw the city falling to pieces around them, people screaming and writhing as the infection tore them apart.

Them against the world. It seemed like a much more fun prospect when it was an idle fantasy rather than reality.

Smoker let out a long sigh, and she ran a hand through her hair and leaned her head back.

"Why not?"

She didn't know what else to say, and Hunter's breathing eventually slowed as she fell asleep, pressed against her side. Smoker stared into the darkness, waiting for dawn and she could hear that faint growling far away, and something that sounded like coughing.

All they had left was each other. Mercy Hospital wasn't far away now. They just had to survive.


End file.
